A professionally orchestrated kidnapping goes horribly, HORRIBLY wrong.
12-year-old ballerina Abigail (Alisha Weir) is kidnapped by six professionals, each of whom was hired for a special skill set, with their employer's mission statement being that the child will be ransomed to her father for the sum of fifty-million dollars. After smoothly pulling off the kidnapping, they take the girl to the father's lush mansion and await a response to their demands while the girl is kept drugged in one of the mansion's bedrooms. The kidnappers, in a bid for them to have as little information on each other as possible if they should get caught, are each assigned an alias based on members of the Rat Pack. The crew member who is given the alias of "Joey" (Melissa Barrera) is a former Army medic (and current junkie) who is trying to recover, and she is tasked with caring for Abigail while she is their captive. Joey is a tortured soul, but she is kind and in the throes of missing the young son she. abandoned due to her problems, so when dealing with Abigail, Joey's motherly instincts allow her to connect with the girl.
The crew are told they will be in the house overnight, but while settling in they are informed that Abigail is that daughter of one Kristof Lazaar, an international crime lord of fearsome renown, who has a legendary hitman named Valdez in his stable, a hitman with a savage and demonic reputation. Upon hearing of this, the crew is terror-stricken, and several of them opt to just leave and forfeit their cut of the ransom. But as they hit the exits, the entire house seals itself off with bars and shutters two inches thick blocking all egress. Clearly, they have been set up in a trap, but the question is why? Then things get weird, as one of their number is found decapitated by an unknown killer. Is it the infamous Valdez? Is one of them actually Valdez? Or is it something much, much worse? The crew is sure as shit about to find out.
I'll just stop right there, in case you somehow missed the trailers for this one, which gave away the story's huge reveal from the get-go. I guess it wouldn't hurt the enjoyment of this already very good little shocker, but going into this with no knowledge of what's really going on would be a real kick in the audience's collective ass. I saw it on opening weekend, after a couple of months of the trailers basically telling me exactly what the deal is, and I enjoyed it nonetheless, but I am going to hold out hope that you get to see it cold.
Now that I’ve seen ABIGAIL twice, the second time being for the purposes of a refresher for this year's series of essays, I give it an 8 out of 10. It’s a really good, blacker-than-black comedy, especially for a modern horror effort that goes for a R-rating instead of more potentially lucrative PG-13, but it has pacing issues that could have been solved with a judicious edit here and there. And the foreknowledge provided by those trailers serves to ruin what could have been a gut punch of a reveal. As previously stated, if one went into the film knowing nothing, one would think it was a movie about six criminal specialists who are hired to kidnap a 12-year-old girl with zero explanation as to why, or whose child she is. The reveal takes roughly 47 minutes to get to, and up until that point the narrative is a straight crime thriller. I just wish they’d had the balls and restraint to take the audience by surprise. A real blown opportunity.
And once the utter mayhem and DEADALIVE level of spewing showers of blood and offal of the final act concludes, it remains kind of open-ended, but I sincerely hope that the studio doesn't get greedy and try to turn this strong stand-alone effort into an ongoing franchise. That wouldn't work, specifically because of the nature of the central conceit. Let's just say that Alisha Weir, who gives a knockout performance as Abigail, is at the age where a growth spurt is more than likely, which automatically kills any hope of reprisal of the role going forward. For once, I say just let a solid effort rest on its laurels and don't milk the teat dry.
And when approaching this film, bear in mind that it's a Universal picture, the latest in a proud brand legacy of monster flicks, and this it can be taken as a sequel to one of that roster's most iconic entries. A clue: It opens to the strains of "Swan Lake," which is heard throughout the film, thus evoking a certain 1931 horror cinema landmark, as that tune opened that classic movie.
Oh, what the hell...
This was originally developed as DRACULA'S DAUGHTER. There. Are you happy now?
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